Irineos Triandafillou

The four-voice fugue:

An old scratched record of Beethoven’s 5th, conducted by Josef Krips, from my parents’ music collection was my first contact with classical music. I felt the sound I heard through the veil of countless scratches was the most marvelous experience of my still young life. And this experience was a real one as I gained an effective weapon with which to face my problems: Everything in my sphere of emotions I associated with Music while I identified my logical thoughts with what my teachers would later call “Mathematics”.

 

Over time, the boundary between the two got more and more indistinct until, during my studies in mathematics at the University of Patras in Greece, it completely disappeared. At the same time, my studies of the Accordion and of music composition at several Greek conservatories helped dissolve this distinction.

In 1995, at the age of 26 years after completing my double degree I made a decision: I applied for and was admitted to the University of Music FRANZ LISZT Weimar in Germany to study conducting.

 

Since that time as a conductor I have been fortunately enough to perform a great number of works with numerous symphony orchestras and chamber music ensembles throughout Europe. This palette of music spans time from the Middle Ages to present. In the course of this, I learned what I believe was in the minds of the great composers. This was a profound experience for me as a composer. Meanwhile, mathematics remained a steady companion. For example, in my thesis “Body and Technique: The conducting tools to interpretation of contemporary music” after my degree at the same University I used  Information Theory to prove that the time needed to give a message to the orchestra by the conductor is a half of a conductor’s beat. This Theorem discredits the usefulness of the subdivision of a conductor’s beat.

 

The following statement describes all my intentions: “My aspiration is to express the essence of today’s thinking through Music and to comprehend it through Mathematics.”

 

And so now the parts of my life continue: I conduct because I want to share a part of beautiful things with people. I compose because I want to impart beautiful things to people. I teach because I want that the people take part in beautiful things; and I’m a  Mathematician because this binds the four parts, the conductor, the composer, the teacher and the mathematician, into a four-voice fugue.

 

 

Irineos Triandafillou